OCTOBER 16, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY BETSY MURPHY
CORRESPONDENT |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
When you are a research physician and a registered pharmacist who works as a medical director, you must certainly dream of what your progeny will become: surgeon, physicist, medical mogul?
When Wes Hauptman told his parents, Dr. Jonathan Hauptman and Cindy Starr, he wanted to be a comedian, they didn’t laugh; they told him, “That sounds good. Let’s find some classes you can take.”
“If they didn’t believe I can do it they would not have supported my choice,” the 21-year-old Emerson College senior says. They’re very supportive.”
So is his sister, Emily, who is also an Emerson student and also a comedian. “She got me into this,” says Wes. “She said ‘just try it. Just do it.'”
“I was always funny,” he says matter-of-factly in answer to a question. Growing up in Ridgewood, he had a brief history with Ridgewood High School New Players. “I had a very, very tiny role,” he recalls, “one line in a 2-hour show. Once I was an ugly, awkward nerd. But basically, it made me hungrier to perform.”
In his sophomore year at Emerson in Boston he was a TV producer major. “I started stand-up,” says the young man who writes his own material.
The summer before his junior year, Wes started looking for an internship, sending emails “all over the place.” He heard from the director of new talent at the Gotham Club in New York City who gave him an offer for that summer, Appearing there twice, he says, “I did a 6-minute set. I have some stage fright; but after I get started and people are laughing I feel comfortable.” He wrote to audition for AXS TV Live at Gotham – and was the youngest among 12 to be invited to audition. “I didn’t get it, but I think I will be invited again,” he says.
Monday, Oct. 26, at the Gotham Comedy Club, 208 W. 23 St. in New York City. There are two shows; Wes is in the first one, at 7 p.m.